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How to Maximize Your Accessibility as a Real Estate Agent

September 30, 2015

In this market, it’s the most accessible real estate agent that will take home the worm. Everyday, agents coach clients through making some of the biggest decisions of their lives and that means being available outside of meetings and showings.

It may help to think about it like this. Agents are like college professors. Except instead of teaching eager undergrads, they teach a class of hopeful homeowners. Their ultimate job is to prepare them for the final exam of buying a home.

Here’s everything that should be in an agent’s “syllabus” to hand out to clients:

Your Social Media Accounts

Young home buyers prefer agents who use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to showcase listings. This does not mean creating Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts and just leaving them to do their job. Social media use needs to be active instead of passive. Young home buyers in 2015, millennials just starting to buy homes, want agents who have a real and regular presence on these forums.In addition to using it for lead generation, you can stay up to date with real estate news, retweet relevant things and reach out directly to buyers’ accounts. You should ask to follow your clients, and have them follow you. Social media is all about conversation. Always remember to check your profiles to see if clients are trying to reach you through social media.

A Way to Download Your Personalized Real Estate AppNAR’s 2014 Profile of home buyers and sellers tells us that 50% of homebuyers are using apps to find listings. Maximize your visibility to clients by becoming being a fixture in their phones and in app stores. It makes good sense not only to have a user-friendly responsive website but also to offer potential clients a personalized app they can download and use to view your listings as well as contact you. When they are in the market and are ready to buy a home, you are going to appear much more available than other agents in the area.

Your Scheduled ‘Office’ Hours

When homebuyers are just beginning the search process, they are bound to have a lot of questions. Making sure you are accessible to these pre-buyers can help build a future relationship. Keeping it to a schedule also helps reduce your stress level. List your office hours clearly on your websites, social media, and in your emails, and make sure to stay distraction free during that time so you can focus on your clients’ needs.

It’s 2015 and that means there is no replacement for the one-to-one relationship in real estate sales. Build yourself a clear, detailed syllabus and be sure to email us at gomobile@smarteragent.com to let us know how it worked out!